I was having trouble walking that Saturday morning. Exhausted, fatigued, and discouraged, I had told my husband I couldn’t participate in the church leaf-raking service project we were doing for our widows and shut-ins. I felt embarrassed when my family left the house clad in boots and gloves and armed with rakes and leaf-blowers to join the rest of the church for an afternoon of work. Instead, I spent my afternoon moving from ice pack to heating pad to magnesium bath. “This is pretty low,” I grumbled. “Can’t even rake for a couple of hours.” Truthfully, though, it wasn’t just raking. It was not sleeping, difficulty bending over, brain fog, constant fatigue. You can’t see my disease when you look at me, but some days there’s little I can do but attempt to mitigate my pain.
A friend from church called to check on me that Saturday. She knew I’d been having a particularly rough time, and when I expressed how poorly I was doing and how embarrassed I was to miss a service project when I look completely normal to anyone watching, my friend gently rebuked me:
“First, you don’t need to worry about what people think. That’s pride. Second, I don’t think the church knows the degree of your suffering because you haven’t publicly asked for prayer. How can the church know if you don’t share? You need the church to pray for you. We are your family, and we love you. You need to let the church love you.”
I swallowed my knee-jerk defense and let her kind—but corrective—words soak in. She was right. For five Sundays in a row, I had squelched the urge to speak up during corporate prayer. Each week, I’d listened to others ask for prayer, hurt along with them when they shared their requests for healing, for restoration, for salvation of loved ones, for miracles. I told myself that everyone has problems and pain. I’m not special, says the litany in my head. Stop complaining. Speaking up is attention-seeking; I’m making more of this than it really is. I don’t think that about others, but I do think it about myself.
But, after my friend’s rebuke, I remembered the charge in James: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14).
I thought about James’s words all afternoon, even after my family returned from raking, The following Sunday morning, during corporate prayer, I worked up the nerve to obey Scripture. I blubbered through the whole thing, really. The moment I opened my mouth, it was a train wreck of a confession: pride, hard to share, chronic pain, no sleep, fourteen-month flare-up, desperate, healing, trust, God, help, losing my mind, exhausted, please. When I finished, I mopped my face with a tissue, felt my husband squeeze my arm, held my breath. I don’t know what I was expecting. Scorn? Disdain? Embarrassment? Eye-rolling? Not even close. There were numerous words of comfort and encouragement from around the sanctuary. One of our elders-in-training stood up and blessed the effort it took to be honest. The church gathered around me, laid hands on me, and prayed over me with tears on their faces and confidence in God’s ability to heal. They prayed for sleep, for reduced pain, for complete healing. They stood in line to hug me and wipe my tears away, offered to lighten my load through the holidays, promised to pray around the clock.
The Lord didn’t heal me instantaneously after that prayer time. But I’ll tell you what He did do: He enveloped me with His love through the love of His people. Throughout the week, I received texts and reminders of regular prayer, thoughtful cards and gifts, even gatherings of church members praying for me without my knowledge. There have been offers to drop off food when my family visits for the holidays, offers to pick up my kids for a day here and there during winter break so I can rest, Venmo payments to cover X-rays, treatments, and therapies. Love. Love. Love.
I have been a pastor’s wife for eighteen years. For most of that time, I have lived my life in a very open way in hopes of encouraging my church to be transparent and vulnerable. I know better than most that we can’t bear burdens in the church if we don’t know what those burdens are. Paul charged the Galatian church to “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). We can’t do that for one another if we don’t know what the burdens are. I know this. And yet, in the last fourteen months, I’ve felt ashamed of my weaknesses, embarrassed of my limitations, and quiet about how bad things have really been. I don’t want to need help. And yet, I need it sometimes.
There will be no burden-bearing if there is no burden-sharing. The church is an extension of God’s love for us. Sometimes we have to swallow our pride, risk vulnerability, and own our weaknesses to receive it. We rob the family of God of the opportunity to love us when we hide our struggles. Why is it so difficult for some of us? Perhaps it is because we are used to being the burden-bearers. We don’t like how the shoe fits when we we’re the ones in need. It pinches with need and rubs blisters against our desire for self-sufficiency. Pride works in many mysterious ways. But God knows what we need.
In church this Sunday, I raised my hand again during corporate prayer. I thanked the church for praying, updated them on my recent scans, laughed and told them that the love of the body is almost better than a pain-free night. Almost. The pastor leading prayer prayed boldly for complete healing anyway. A friend came up to me afterwards and asked in her direct, no-nonsense way, “Why didn’t you tell me you were so sick?” I fumbled through the difficult definition of chronic illness, “It’s not sickness, exactly. It’s just—” I trailed off. It’s hard to explain. She nodded and promised, “I’m coming to your house after your extended family leaves for Christmas and cleaning it from top to bottom. You know I will.” She hugged me tightly, her brusque words a warm blanket around my aching shoulders.
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I have hope that I will get better in the coming months. I’m in good hands with some healthcare professionals who are also praying for me as they treat me from the inside out. I know that I will likely always deal with fair amounts of pain, though. I am tempted to panic at the thought of a future that resembles the past year. And yet, there has hardly been a year of my life when I have been so confident of God’s specific love for me. He keeps pouring it out—abundantly in the quiet of the morning with my open Bible and my heating pad, generously in the overwhelming care of my local church, in the middle of the night when I cry out for Him to be near. In some ways, it was good that I was afflicted so that I could finally see what was right in front of me. Love, love, love. If not for the gentle rebuke from a church member that Saturday, I’d have missed it all this blessedly beautiful burden-bearing.
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Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
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